What happens when surfaces glitter, gleam, sparkle, and shine?

The artists and works featured in this exhibition use a variety of materials to generate these surface effects, from glass to gold, foil, plastic, and pearls. Each material has its own qualities of shine and reflection. The surfaces they offer are seeded with aesthetic associations from glamour to kitsch, celebration to science.

For the viewer, the resulting effect of each work is a combination of material familiarity and perceptual distortion. Surface is the point of contact for the body, it’s skin and texture and touch. The contact between light and surface in these shining, sparkling works creates, variably, the mirrored illusion of extended space, the fracturing and projection of the viewer’s body, rainbow refractions of white gallery light, and uncertainty about the material limits of the work itself.

How does the viewer experience these qualities as integral to the work’s wholeness, affecting the surrounding space, inviting or dissuading contact?

Exhibition documentation at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery courtesy of Toni Hafkensheid.